The use of mercury in artisanal mining to maximize gold recovery among small scale miners in parts of South America continues to attract international attention in the face of an absence of legal restraints and actual enforcement regimes.
The problem, it seems, has reached a level of concern, sufficiently disturbing, to cause it to get the attention of the United Nations. While the profligate use of mercury is known to be prevalent mostly across poor countries in South America, Bolivia is increasingly being fingered as one of the highest on the list of hemispheric offenders. Reportedly, one of the few countries on the continent that is yet to ban the importation of the lethal chemical, sections of the gold mining sector are believed to openly facilitate its use in illegal mining.
